Last week, Gallaudet University suspended its chief diversity officer, Dr. Angela McCaskill, after a faculty member filed a complaint that she had signed the petition to challenge Maryland’s marriage equality law. McCaskill suggested she might pursue legal action, but said little else before the end of the week. Today, she spoke out for the first time, explaining her signature and suggesting she would be seeking compensation for emotional distress and reputation damage:

MCCASKILL: Signing that petition is a right that I have as a citizen of the state of Maryland. It simply means that I want to see this very sensitive issue put on the ballot as a referendum in the state of Maryland. [...] I am dismayed that Gallaudet University is still a university of intolerance, a university that manages by intimidation, a university that allows bullying among faculty, staff and students.

Gallaudet President Alan Hurwitz released a statement this morning welcoming McCaskill back to her job, but explaining that the administrative leave was a “prudent action” to allow the university to consider whether her actions violated her job responsibilities. Hurwitz did not specifically address the LGBT community or how McCaskill’s actions may have impacted gay students and staff on campus.

Though many of the governing variables differ, the situation resembles the 2008 case of Crystal Dixon, who as associate vice president for human resources at the University of Toledo wrote a letter to the Toledo Free Press condemning homosexuality as a choice and countering the notion that gay people are “civil-rights victims.” Dixon was fired, and in turn sued the university for violating her free speech. The federal district court ruled that her remarks, as a public employee, were sufficiently insubordinate to her job responsibilities and dismissed her suit. It’s unclear if McCaskill would fare any better in her complaint.

Still, her defense of her signature was clearly fed to her by opponents of marriage equality. There was no valid reason to sign the petition except to support an obstacle to the law taking effect. The argument that people should have the opportunity to vote on civil rights is no less offensive — nor different in any way — than directly opposing marriage equality. Given that her lawyer has said she will not express her personal view on the matter, concerns about her ability to support gay Gallaudet students, as outlined in the vision statement of its Office of Diversity and Equity for Students, may be legitimately warranted.

The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer has been railing against the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Mix It Up at Lunch” day, where students are encouraged to simply connect with someone new at lunch on October 30. Fischer told the New York Times that the day “punishes Christian students” who don’t approve of homosexuality, and he doubled down on those comments in a CNN interview this morning, comparing the day to Halloween candy that has been laced with cyanide:

FISCHER: Parents need to understand that this is about pressuring public schools and students in public schools to accept homosexuality as a normal healthy alternative to heterosexuality. You know, it’s interesting to me that they’re doing this October 30, the day before Halloween, and what this problem is, it’s like poisoned Halloween candy. Somebody takes a candy bar, injects it with cyanide, the label looks fine, it looks innocuous, it looks fine — it’s not until you internalize it that you realize how toxic it is. And we want parents to be aware that any program that comes from the Southern Poverty Law Center is going to be toxic to their student’s moral health.

CNN anchor Carol Costello challenged Fischer’s ideas, reminding viewers that he has claimed that the Nazis recruited gay stormtroopers because they were more ruthless. Watch the full interview (via Equality Matters):

At the end of the interview, Costello cut him off, pointing out he was spewing untruths. She concluded the segment by saying, “Thanks for sharing your views, I guess.” Fischer claimed on Twitter that she “interrupted me more than Alan Colmes, which I heretofore thought was humanly impossible.”

Every April, conservative social groups rally against the Day of Silence, when students across the country protest anti-LGBT bullying by remaining silent while at school. Now, though, they are hypocritically endorsing a silent protest against a woman’s right to get an abortion, known as the Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity. Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) explains that a silent protest is free speech:

TEDESCO: Students have First Amendment rights to engage in speech activities. Certainly remaining silent to raise awareness about a social issue qualifies. [...] I think the most important thing is to understand that school officials think that the abortion issue is sensitive and could be offensive to people. And lots of times, school officials just wrongly think that they can shut down a speech activity because they think it’s going to be offensive to someone.

That same organization, ADF, sought to “shatter the silence” of GLSEN’s Day of Silence (DoS), instead encouraging “dialogue” — in particular, the faulty idea that homosexuality is a choice. Other anti-gay groups chastise the DoS as “evil propaganda” and “child abuse,” calling on schools to ban it because it’s simply a “cover for the promotion of homosexuality.” A coalition of groups, including the American Family Association and Liberty Counsel, encourage parents to remove their students from school that day, emphasizing that students “do NOT have a right to remain silent during class time if a teacher asks you to speak.”

But for the issue of abortion, this form of protest is perfectly acceptable “with teachers’ permission.” This dichotomy is the perfect example of conservatives’ hypocrisy: attempting to inhibit speech they disagree with but protect it when they support it.

Michael Brodkorb

Michael Brodkorb was a powerful Republican insider within the Minnesota legislator until it came to light 10 months ago that he was having an affair with Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch (R). Koch resigned and Brodkorb was fired, but after keeping his silence in the interim, he’s now speaking out against the marriage inequality amendment. He explained to WCCO that the amendment had nothing to do with morality, but was passed to drive Republican voter turnout:

“It provided a turnout opportunity for Republicans,” he said.

Brodkorb was former Deputy Chairman of the State Republican Party and top Senate staffer, and says GOP Senators knew a driving force behind the gay marriage amendment wasn’t morality. It was political reality.

Top GOP leaders thought they couldn’t beat incumbent Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Republicans would stay home.

“The belief was, the United States senate race was not going to be close, and that Republicans needed and social conservatives needed a reason to get to the polls in November,” he said.

This revelation is troubling, but perhaps not so surprising. After all, it cannot be forgotten that the Minnesota state government had to shut down, because instead of passing a budget, Republican leadership dedicated excessive time to debating and passing the amendment banning same-sex marriage, then flying around the state to defend it.

Brodkorb says the plan may now backfire, because strong opposition to the harmful amendment could cause some Republican state Senators to lose. Polls have shown a close race, but they indicate the amendment is set to lose, because Minnesota law requires a full 50 percent vote of approval — non-votes will count as no-votes. (HT: Truth Wins Out.)

A coalition of groups that support ex-gay therapy has launched a new website called “Voices of Change,” chock full of mostly-anonymous testimonials endorsing the fraudulent, harmful treatment. Truth Wins Out noticed one particular video from the infamous therapist Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, co-founder of NARTH and mentor to many other ex-gay proponents, claiming that half of his clients are minors, and that proportion is growing:

NICOLOSI: We are getting more an more teenagers coming to our clinic. Years ago when I did this work, the average age of our clients were late 20′s and early 30′s…Today, I would say that 50-percent of the clients at our clinic, and we have 135 ongoing cases a week. We have seven therapists that only deal with homosexuality. Fifty percent are teenagers.

Watch it:

This is why California’s new ban on ex-gay therapy for minors, as well as those proposed in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, are essential for protecting young people. Nicolosi encourages young people to believe they can change and that they should want to change, neither of which reflects professional therapeutic practices of affirming a client’s sexual orientation, whatever it is. The two lawsuits challenging California’s law provide plenty of insight into the manipulative tactics. According to the suit from the Pacific Justice Institute, therapists don’t even recognize the concept of family rejection, instead claiming it’s parents’ rights to enroll their kids in the harmful therapy. Nicolosi’s own suit, filed along with the Liberty Counsel and several of his NARTH protégés, rests on the pretext that ex-gay therapy is the only way some kids can reconcile their relationships with their parents.

It’s bad enough that anyone would offer or encourage something so self-stigmatizing and money-draining as ex-gay therapy, but these “therapists” also nurture and depend upon family rejection for their income. In no way can any defense of ex-gay therapy be rectified with a concern for the well-being of children.